When the west wind is blowing early it’s going to be a rough day. An early south wind might die but a west wind will only get stronger through the day. I don’t know what the scientific basis causes this but I know it’s true. Sometimes when it’s blowing from the south early you can time it just right and get a magic hour as the wind slacks; right as the south wind is dying and the west wind is picking up.
The west wind isn’t blowing particularly hard this morning, but it doesn’t take much. Just a slight wind can make sort-of-fun surf become miserable and just not worth it.
Before the surf cams, my best indicator I had was this tree right outside my window that would ruffle if there was any sort of south or west wind. I could look out my window and if the leaves were moving at all I knew the surf would be sub-par. It was sheltered from offshore winds though. Now I rely on technology, on the camse. Now I can wake up, turn over, and look at the surf and see what it looks like right away. This morning I took a look and went right back to sleep.
Southern California has been getting the biggest south swell it’s seen in over a decade. At first I was hesitant to believe it as almost always seems to be the case with swells like this–we’re always inclined to dismiss the evidence we see with our eyes in favor of the visuals we conjure from the deep recesses of our memory, even if they’ve been inflated by years of .
The last time we were hit with a swell from the southern hemisphere the size of this one was over a decade ago in 2014. I remember that swell vividly; it was the day my friend Ben passed. He was saving someones life when he gave his own.
Seeing waves at the east jetty in Corona Del Mar break wide enough to wash over the swim buoys changed my mind about this swell. I remember sitting nervously, anxiously, on the lifeguard boat in 2014 as waves were breaking 50 yards off the jetty. Normally on a good size swell the jetty might be just breaking on the biggest sets, with a pack of guys sitting at the end of the jetty waiting for a wave to finally come through, with only the guys on the biggest boards and the most willing to surf dangerously close to the rocks actually getting anything. On a big south swell it will break more consistently but the wave still breaks dangerously close to the rocks as it wedges it’s way down the length of the jetty.
This swell was different though. Only the smallest waves were breaking close to the rocks. The sets were breaking wide from the jetty and the wave looked like a propper surfable pointbreak. One friend paddled out but later told me that it was a nice “paddle” and that he only managed to get one mediocre wave in as there was a pack of surfers on much bigger boards who were willing to sit much closer to the rocks. I felt for him; as I’ve surfed there and didn’t much enjoy how close you had to be to the rocks as they wizzed by you and you were trying to navigate the chunky foamy bouncy wave face while also trying to stay as close to those barnacle covered rocks as you dared in order to stay in the wave. It looks like a fun wave from the beach but it’s actually much scarier once you’re on a wave. I’ve also seen the horrible consequences of getting too close to those rocks and getting washed into them and over them by a sizeable wave. As a lifeguard I’d handed more than a few surfers the antiseptic wipes and handfuls of gauze they requested to temporarily dress their wounds for the ride home.
During that same infamous summer of 2014 I got caught off guard when I misjudged a swell interval while trying to rescue someone off of a different rock formation. The rock I was trying to rescue them from had this steeply sloped face that was covered in barnacles and had deep pockets worn into it. I was in a hurry and acting a little too carelessly when I lost my grip as I was washed up the face by a set wave and dragged back down it. I ended up in deep water and took stock in my condition and noted that I seemed to be all in one piece. I pulled myself back up onto the lifeguard boat I had just jumped off before the rescue and the operator looked at me in slight horror. I had abrasions all over me, front and back, from head to toe (I would learn later that I had also fractured my kneecap) and I remember later in the urgent care the doctor slathered this antibiotic cream on me from head to toe on all my abrasions that had the consistency of cake icing. I did really feel like a cake getting frosted.
So now I am especially wary of mixing rocks and surf.
Back to the present day: The rest of the county was practically un-surfable during this swell. The only other really good spot in north Orange County was 56th Street. With Trestles technically being in San Diego County I think it’s fair to say that 56th Street was the best wave in the county during this swell. 56th Street is an interesting wave and it’s one that for a long time I overlooked and under-appreciated. In an effort to curb erosion the army corp of engineers built a handful of rock groins (small jetties) every 4 blocks from 28th street to 56th street. 56th street is the farthest north groins. It’s one of the longest groins and being the farthest north it gets the largest sand bank built up on it’s lee side of whatever the swell the current season is serving up (south swell in the warmer months and west swell in the colder months). The left off the groin in the summer time is one of the best waves around. It’s an improbably wave that breaks almost like a sand bottom left.
On these long period swells from the southern hemisphere most of the rest of Newport Beach becomes one big wall breaking almost all at once. The waves come from the south and peel along the beach in a zipper fast fashion looking almost makable but in reality they’re peeling about twice as fast as even the best surfers can progress down the line. Occasionally one will let up for one microsend and allot an expert surfer the chance to “make” the wave by straightening out at the last second and ducking under the breaking lip but those waves are the exception, not the rule. They make for great still photos though.
The sandbar on the north side of 56th Street does something special though and it offers up a drastic change in the bathymetry of the bottom and causes the waves to wrap around the groin and peel much more slowly for about 50 to 100 yards. On a lower tide there are amazing barrels to be had and on a higher tide the wave becomes a long workable left hander offering up a nice shoulder for multiple turns. Inevitably though these waves start breaking past the sandbar formed from the groin and turn back in to the racing way-too-fast semi-closeouts that you see along the rest of the beach.
So this was the biggest southern hemi, as we call swell generated in the far southern regions of the pacific ocean off the coast of New Zealand, to hit and in Orange County propper there were 3 actually surfable spots not including any mysterious barely known secret reef breaks that exist along the Laguna Beach coast. These 3 were 56th Street, CDM Jetty, and Doheney, and to add to that we can include Trestles and San Onofre as Orange County spots–which for all purposes they are considering the 30 or so miles of Marine Base Camp Pendleton separates them from any surfers in San Diego County–to make it 5 surfable spots during the biggest and most hyped summer swell in over a decade. Some thrill seekers wouldadd The Wedge to this list but I personally don’t consider the wedge to be a surfable wave even if there are a handful of mad men who manage to seemingly have fun surfing there.
This is the conundrum of these big southern hemis. Everyone knows they’re coming for at least a week before they hit and by the time they hit our coast they’ve been hyped to the point that everyone wants to test their mettle against these bigger than normal waves. The only problem is that the masses are compelled to surf but forced to surf only a handful of spots causing extreme over-crowding. The most user-friendly surf spots are the most crowded; kooks on longboards are so thick at Doheney that you could practically walk from board to board from the harbor to Capo Beach a mile south without much trouble. Trestles and San Onofre are not much better and the odds of getting a wave to yourself at either of these spots on days like this are a pipe dream.
So this is the reality of surfing in Southern California. The surf is pumping but the options are limited and the crowds are overwhelming. Everywhere you would want to surf is ultimately unappealing. Add to the fact that we’ve had west wind early on most of these mornings and that leaves me watching the cams hoping the wind might die or that the crowds might dissipate but ultimately I know that each morning I wake up early I’ll go back to bed after a quick initial check and will most likely be waiting until the swell dies a little bit and this gross pattern of early morning west wind clears up.
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